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RUNG  CHAP  BOOKS 

JBERT  CRACKANTHORPE 
[GNETTES 

stels  in  Prose 


ITED   BY   GUIDO    BRUNO   IN   HIS   GARRET   ON 
USHINGTON  SQUARE,  NEW  YORK 

[ay  1915  Fifteen  Cents 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 

Vol.  1 MAY  1915 No.  8 

THE  body  of  Mr.  Crackanthorpe,  when  found  in  the 
*  Seine,  had  probably  been  in  the  water  for  six 
weeks.  The  face  was  not  recognizable,  and  his  brothers 
were  only  able  to  identify  him  by  his  linen  and  a  sleeve- 
link,  with  which  they  were  familiar.  The  theory  of 
suicide  is  the  popular  one,  but  there  are  those  who  think 
that  the  young  man  met  with  foul  play. 

He  was  a  son  of  Mr.  Montague  Crackanthorpe 
(formerly  Montague  Cookson),  Q.  C.,  D.  C.  L.,  his 
mother  being  the  Mrs.  Crackanthorpe  whose  essays  on 
social  subjects,  such  as  "The  Revolting  Daughters",  have 
been  widely  discussed.  Born  on  May  12,  1870,  Mr. 
Hubert  Crackanthorpe  married,  on  Feb.  14,  1893,  Leila, 
younger  daughter  of  the  late  Mr.  R.  J.  Somerled  Mac- 
donald, a  descendant  of,  Flora  Macdonald.  She  is  a 
grand-daughter  of  the  late  Rt.  Hon.  Sir  William  Grove, 
and  known  in  the  literary  world  as  a  contributor  to 
"The  Yellow  Book"  and  "The  Savoy."  Mr.  Hubert 
Crackanthorpe  had  done  literary  work  of  a  strange 
sort.  His  "Wreckage",  a  volume  of  stories,  went  rap- 
idly into  a  second  edition,  and  his  last  book,  "Vignettes", 
received  many  favorable  notices  in  England. 

— The  Critic,  Jan.  g,  1897 


Copyright  1915  by  Guido  Bruno 

M820090 


95  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 


R.  Crackanthorpe  was  just  and  refined,  never  forcing 
the  note ;  there  are  delicacy,  distinction,  discretion  in  his 
quiet  fearlessness  of  manner.  He  makes  no  researches 
into  the  black  mire  of  life,  resolved  to  be  at  all  costs 
a  master  in  the  science  and  secrets  of  the  sewer.  The 
brief  stories  of  "Wreckage",  written  in  so  fresh  and 
pure  an  English,  so  crisp  a  style,  are  uniformly  sad, 
but  of  no  sickening  sadness ;  no  scene  is  drawn,  no 
character  imagined,  no  phrase  chosen  for  its  naked 
horror  of  ugliness  or  gloom.  Take  "T'he  Struggle  For 
Life."  In  less  than  six  pages  we  have  the  story  of 
a  poor  woman  selling  herself  in  the  street  for  the 
pittance  which  will  buy  her  starving  babies  food,  while 
her  brutal  husband  riots  with  prostitutes  in  a  pothouse. 
We  say  with  Rosetti  that  "it  makes  a  goblin  of  the  sun." 
Let  us  also  say  with  him : 

"So  it  is,  *ny  dear. 

All  such  things  touch  secret  strings 

For  heavy  hearts  to  hear. 

So  it  is,  my  dear." 

The  terrible  rapid  pages  are  full  of  an  aching  poig- 
nancy. The  straightforward  sentences  hide  an  inner 
appeal.  The  telling  of  the  misery  becomes  a  thing  of 
dreadful  beauty  and  its  intensity  goes  nearer  to  the 
heart  of  the  whole  dark  matter  than  many  a  moving 
sermon.  The  artists'  abstemiousness  in  Mr.  Crackan- 
thorpe, the  refinement  of  his  reticence,  never  chilled  his 
reader.  "The  pity  of  it!  The  pity  of  it!"  That  was 
the  unspoken  yet  audible  burden  of  his  art. 

Mr.  Crackanthorpe  had  three  chief  gifts :  skill  in 
dramatic  narration — a  sense  of  situation,  a  lively  feeling 
for  the  value  and  interpretation  of  gesture,  posture, 
circumstance;  secondly,  analytic  skill  in  the  conception 
and  presentation  of  character;  thirdly,  descriptive  and 
pictorial  power,  readiness  of  vision,  with  a  faculty  of 
sifting  and  selecting  its  reports. 

His  longest  performance,  the  last  story  in  the 
posthumous  "Last  Studies"  shows  that  he  had  it  in  him 
to  use  all  his  gifts  harmoniously  upon  an  ample  scale; 
but  it  is  probable  that  stories  upon  the  scale  of  "A 
Conflict  of  Egoisms"  in  Wreckage,  of  "Battledore  and 
Shuttlecock"  in  Sentimental  Studies,  and  of  the  masterly 
"Trevor  Perkins"  in  Last  Studies,  would  have  remained 
the  happiest  and  most  distinctive  channels  of  his  art. 

Lionel  Johnson  in  Acad,  Mar.  20,    1897. 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  96 

WE  seem  to  see  in  Hubert  Crackanthorpe  not  only 
a  very  interesting,  but  a  positively  touching  case 
of  what  may  be  called  reaction  against  an  experience 
of  puerilities  judged,  frankly,  inane,  and  a  proportionate 
search,  on  his  own  responsibility  and  his  own  ground, 
for  some  artistic  way  of  marking  the  force  of  the 
reaction. 

To  have  known  him,  however  little,  was  to  decline 
to  wonder  perhaps  how  a  boyishness  superficially  so 
vivid  could  bend  itself  to  this  particular  vehicle,  feel 
the  reality  of  the  thousand  bribes  to  pessimism,  see 
as  salient  the  side  of  life  that  is  neither  miraculous 
coincidence,  nor  hairbreadth  escape  nor  simplified  senti- 
ment, nor  ten  thousand  a  year. 

What  appealed  to  h'm  was  the  situation  that  asked 
for  a  certain  fineness  of  art  and  that  could  best  be 
presented  in  a  kind  of  foreshortened  picture:  the  pos- 
sibilities of  some  phase,  in  especial,  of  a  thoroughly 
personal  relation,  a  relation  the  better  the  more  intimate 
and  demanding,  for  objective  intensity,  some  degree  of 
romposition  and  reduction. 

Henry  James,  preface  to  last  studies. 


97  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 


To  Hubert   Crackanihorpe 

HUBERT,  who  loved  the  country  and  the  town, 

Has  left  his  friends;  and  England  sees  no  more 
The  young,   slight   figure,   musing  on  the  down, 

Nor  France  his  quiet  eyes,  that  o'er  and  o'er 
Traveled  her  landscape,   shaping  it  so  well. 
His  joys  were  there,  but  pity  for  mankind 

Drew  him  where  surging  cities  moved  his  soul: 
He  wrote  of  men  and  women,  wrecked  and  pined 

With  bitter  sorrow;   and  the  misery  stole 

Into  his  life  till  he  bade  life  farewell. 
Pity  he  could  not  stay,  for  he  was  true, 

Tender  and   chivalrous,   and   without   spot; 
Loving  things  great  and  good,   and  love  like  dew 

Fell  from  his  heart  on  those  that  loved  him  not; 

But  those  that  loved  him  knew  that  he  loved  well. 
Too  rough  his  sea,  too  dark  its  angry  tides! 

Things  of  a  day  are  we;   shadows  that  move 
The   lands  of  shadow;  but,   where  he   abides, 

Time  is  no  more;  and  that  great  substance,  Love, 
Is   shadowless.    And   yet,   we   grieve.    Farewell. 

Stopford  A.  Brooke 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  93 


VIGNETTES 


from  the  Saturday  Review 
hitherto  uncollected. 


99  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 

Tthe  loyal  friends  of  my  beloved  son, 
who  saw  in  the  unfolding  flower  of 
his  manhood  a  renewal  of  the  bright  prom- 
ise of  his  early  youth,  I  dedicate,  for  an  ab- 
iding- remembrance,  these  last  fragments  of 
his  interrupted  work. 

Blanche  Alathea  Crackanthorpe. 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  100 


Tout  paysage  est  un  etat  (Tame. 

I1  dE  English  Midlands,  sluggishly  affluent,  a  massy  pro- 
*  fusion  of  well-upholstered  undulations;  Normandy, 
coquettish,  almost  dapper,  in  its  discreet  rusticity,  its 
finnikin  spruceness,  its  distinguished  reticence  of  de- 
tail ;  the  plains  of  Lombardy  in  midsummer,  all  glutted 
with  luscious  vegetation;  Naples,  flaunting  her  blatant, 
Southern  splendour ;  Switzerland,  tricked  out  in  cheap 
sentimentality,  in  a  catchpenny  crudity  of  tone;  Anda- 
lucia,  savagely  harsh,  with  its  bitter,  exasperated  col- 
ouring .... 

In  every  country  there  lurks  a  personality,  and 
the  contemplation  of  the  memory  of  the  lands  where 
one  has  lived,  of  the  books  one  has  cherished,  of  the 
women  one  has  loved,  brings  with  it  a  strange  sense 
of  the  incomprehensible  promptings  of  caprice. 

With  the  fluctuations  of  mood,  Musset  seems  puerile 
or  passionate;  Ami-el,  lachrymose  or  exquisitely  sensi- 
tive; Baudelaire,  macabre  or  impassively  statuesque; 
Browning,  turgid  or  ruggedly  splendid;  Pater,  turtuous 
or  infinitely  dexterous ;  Meredith,  irksome  or  gorgeously 
prismatic. 

In  love,  a  naive  philosopher  once  declared,  "II  n'y 
a  que  les  commencements  qui  sont  charmants."  There 
are  women  whom  we  worshipped  years  ago,  who  would 
certainly  fail  to  move  us  today;  books  that  enthralled 
us  in  childhood,  which  we  hesitate  to  open  again; 
places  we  had  read  of  with  delight  and  for  that  reason 
shrink  from  surveying  .... 

And  so  tonight,  beneath  the  lime-tree,  by  the  dog- 
rose  hedge,  whilst  the  grasshoppers  scrape  their  cease- 
less chorus,  and  the  flies  roam  like  specks  of  gold, 
and  the  fawn-coloured  cattle  stalk  home  from  the 
pastures,  I  wonder  dreamily  how  I  have  come  to  love 
so  steadfastly  the  whole  wayward  grace  of  the  country- 
side— the  melancholy  of  its  wide  plains,  burnt  to  dun 
colour  by  the  Southern  sun;  the  desolate  silences  of 
those  dark,  endless  pine  forests  that  lie  beyond;  the 
hesitating  contours  of  the  wooded  slopes;  the  distant 
Pyrenees,  a  long  ragged,  snow-capped  wall;  the  daz- 
zling-white  roads,  stretching  between  their  tall,  slim 
poplars  straight  towards  th^  b^ri/on;  the  t'^b'ed- 
down,  white-faced  villages,  huddled  on  the  hilltops; 
their  battered,  sloping  roofs,  tilted  all  awry,  like  loose- 


101  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 

fitting,  peaked  cape  of  faded-red  tiles;  the  farmyards, 
strewn  with  dingy  oxbedding,  and  littered  with  a  de- 
crepit multitude  of  objects,  which,  it  seems,  can  never 
have  been  new — broken  earthenware  pots,  rickety  rush- 
bottomed  chairs,  stacks  of  dead  branches,  still  rustling 
in  their  brown,  winter  leaves;  the  slow-paced  oxen 
ploughing  the  land ;  the  peasants,  men,  women  and 
children  swaying  in  line  as  they  sow  the  maize,  with 
the  poultry  pecking  behind; 'the  jangling  bells  of  the 
dilapidated,  yellow-wheeled  courier;  the  marked-days, 
the  sea  of  the  blue  berets,  the  press  of  the  blue 
blouses,  the  incoherent,  waving  of  ox-goads,  the  brist- 
ling of  curved  horns,  the  shifting  mass  of  sleek,  fawn- 
coloured  backs ;  the  narrow,  ramshackle  streets  of  the 
town;  the  line  of  plane-trees  on  the  place  d'armes, 
beneath  which  groups  of  grave  bourgeois  are  forever 
pacing;  and  the  Gave,  spurting  over  the  rocks,  under 
tne  old  Norman  bridge  .... 

The  sun  slips  behind  a  bank  of  inky  cloud,  slowly 
trailing  its  pale-green  stain,  and  the  old,  penetrating 
charm  of  this  tiny  corner  of  the  earth  returns,  and  the 
old  longing  to  bind  myself  to  it,  to  have  my  place 
in  its  life,  always,  through  the  years  to  come  .... 

The  oxen  have  gone  their  way  along  the  road; 
the  lengthy  twilight  shadows  steal  across  the  garden; 
from  the  church-spire  up  on  the  hill  the  Angelus  rings 
out;  quite  near  at  hand  a  tree-frog  starts  piping  his 
shrill,  clear  note,  and  the  cockchafers  their  angry 
whirling;  and  then,  of  a  sudden,  the  violet  night  has 
fallen,  wrapping  all  earth  and  sky  in  her  mysterious, 
impenetrable  blackness  .... 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  102 

I  T  was  New  Year's  Eve.  The  old  scene.  A  London 
•  night;  a  heavy-brown  atmosphere  splashed  with  liquid 
golden  lights;  the  bustling  market-place  of  sin;  a 
silent  crowd  of  black  figures  drifting  over  a  wet  flicker- 
ing pavement. 

The  slow,  grave  notes  from  a  church  tower  took 
command  of  the  night.  The  last  one  faded;  the  old 
year  had  slipped  by.  And  then  a  woman  laughed — 
a  strident,  level  laugh;  and  there  swept  through  all 
the  crowd  a  mad  feverish  tremor.  The  women  ran 
one  to  the  other,  kissing,  wildly  welcoming  the  New 
Year  in;  and  the  men,  shouting  thickly,  snatched  at 
them  as  they  ran.  And  the  cabmen  touted  eagerly  for 
fares. 

Across  the  road,  by  a  corner,  a  street  missionary 
stood  on  a  chair — an  undersized,  poorly  clad  man,  with 
a  wizened  bearded  face. 

.  .  .  "Repent  .  .  .  repent  .  .  .  and  save  your  souls 
tonight  from  the  eternal  torments  of  hell  fire"  .  .  . 

The  women  jostled  him,  pelted  him  with  fond 
jibes;  and  one — a  young  girl — broke  into  a  peal  of 
hysterical  laughter. 

And  I  mused  wonderingly  on  the  ugliness  of  sin. 


103  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 


REVERIE. 

I  dreamed  of  an  age  grown  strangely  picturesque — 
of  the  rich  enfeebled  by  monotonous  ease;  of  the 
shivering  poor  clamoring  rightly  for  justice;  of  a  help- 
less democracy,  vast  revolt  of  the  illinformed ;  of 
priests  striving  to  be  rational;  of  sentimental  moralists 
protecting  iniquity;  of  middle-class  princes;  of  sybaritic 
saints ;  of  complacent  and  pompous  politicians ;  of 
doctors  hurrying  the  degeneration  of  the  race;  of 
artists  discarding  possibilities  for  limitations ;  of  press- 
men befooling  a  pretentious  public;  of  critics  refining 
upon  the  busman's  methods ;  of  inhabitants  of  Camber- 
well  chattering  of  culture;  of  ladies  of  the  pavement 
aping  the  conventionality  of  Nonconformist  circles. 

And  I  dreamed  of  thisr  great,  dreamy  London  of 
ours;  of  her  myriad  fleeting  moods;  of  the  charm  of 
her  portentious  provincialty ;  and  I  awoke  all  a-glad 
and  hungering  for  life  .... 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  104 

THE  FIVE  SISTER  PANSIES. 

A  HESE  are  their  names — Carlotta,  Lubella,  Belinda, 
Aminta,  Clarissa.  By  the  old  bowling-green  they  stand, 
a  little  pompously  perhaps,  with  a  slight  superfluity 
of  dignity,  conscious  of  their  own  full,  comely  con- 
tours— -a  courtly  group  of  rotund  dames.  Heavy  Car- 
lotta, the  eldest,  lover  of  blatant  luxury,  overblown, 
middle-aged,  in  her  gown  of  rich  magenta,  all  em- 
broidered with  tawdry  gilt;  Lubella,  wearing  portly 
velvet  of  dark  purple,  sensual,  indolent,  insolent  as  an 
empress  of  old,  gleaming  her  thin,  yellow  eye ;  insig- 
nificant Belinda,  bedecked  in  silly  sentimental  mauvrt, 
all  for  dallying  with  the  facile  gossip  of  gallanterie, 
gushing,  giggling,  gullible ;  unsophisticated  Aminta,  with 
tresses  of  flaming  gold,  amiable  and  obvious  as  a 
common  stage  heroine;  and  Clarissa,  the  youngest, 
slylv  smirking  the  while,  above  her  frock  of  milk- 
white  innocence. 


i05  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 


IN  THE  LANDES. 

CjlNCE  sunrise  I  had  been  traveling — along  the 
*~  straight-stretching  roads,  white  with  summer  sand, 
interminably  striped  by  the  shadows  of  the  poplars, 
across  the  great,  parched  plain,  where,  all  the  day's 
length,  the  heat  dances  over  the  waste  land,  and  the 
cattle  bells  float  their  far-away*  tinkling ;  through  the 
desolate  villages,  empty  but  for  the  beldames,  hunched 
in  the  doorways,  pulling  the  flax  with  horny,  tremulous 
fingers;  and  on  towards  the  desolate  silence  of  the 
flowerless  pine-forests  .... 

And  there  the  night  fell.  The  sun  went  down 
unseen;  a  dim  flickering  ruddled  the  host  of  tree- 
trunks,  and  the  darkness  started  to  drift  through  the 
forest.  The  road  grew  narrow  as  a  foot-path,  and 
the  mare,  slackening  her  pace,  uneasily  strained  her 
white  neck  ahead  .... 

Out  of  the  darkness  a  figure  sprang  beside  me. 
A  shout  rang  out — words  of  an  uncouth  patois  that 
I  did  not  understand.  And  the  mare  terrified,  gal- 
loped forward,  snorting  and  swerving,  from  side  to 
side  .... 

And  a  strange  superstitious  fear  crept  upon  me — 
a  dreamy  dread  of  the  future;  a  helpless  presentiment 
of  evil  days  to  come ;  a  sense,  too,  of  the  ruthless 
nullity  of  life,  of  the  futile  deception  of  effort,  of  bitter 
revolt  against  the  extinction  of  death;  a  yearning  after 
faith  in  some  vague  survival  beyond  .... 

And  the  words  of  the  old  proverb  returned  to 
me  mockingly,  "The  eye  is  not  satisfied  with  seeing, 
nor  is  the  ear  with  hearing." 


BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS  106 


SPRING  IN  BEARN. 

A  F  a  sudden  it  seems  to  have  come — the  poplars,  flut- 
"tering  their  golden-green;  the  fruit-trees  tricked  out 
in  fete-day  frocks  of  frail  snow-white;  the  hoary  oaks 
unfurling  their  baby  leaves;  and  the  lanes  all  littered 
with  golden  bloom  .... 

The  blue  flax  sways  like  a  sensitive  sea;  the  violets 
peep  from  amid  the  moss;  beneath  every  hedgerow  the 
primroses  cluster;  and  the  rivulets  tinkle  their  shrill 
glad  songs  .... 

Dense  levies  of  orchisses  empurple  the  meadows, 
where  the  butterflies  hasten  their  wavering  flight;  the 
sunlight  breathes  through  the  pale-leafed  woods;  and 
the  air  is  sweet  with  the  scent  of  the  spring,  and  loud 
with  the  humming  of  wings  .... 


It  lasts  but  a  week — a  fleeting  mood  of  dainty 
gaiety;  a  quick  discarding  of  the  brown  shabbiness 
of  winter  for  a  smiling  array  of  white  and  gold,  fresh- 
green  and  turquoise-blue  .... 

And  then,  it  has  flitted,  and  through  the  long, 
parched  months  relentlessly  blazes  the  summer  sun. 


107  BRUNO  CHAP  BOOKS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Wreckage:  Seven  Studies.    London.     W.  Heineman. 

1893.     Profiles.     A    Conflict    of    Egoisms. 

The    Struggle    for    Life.     Dissolving    View. 

A     Dead     Woman.       When     Greek     Meets 

Greek.     Embers. 

Vignettes:     A  miniature  journal  of   whim  and  senti- 
ment.   London.    J.    Lane,   1896. 

Last  Studies:  London.    W.  Heineman,     1897 

Anthony   Gastius'   Courtship. 
Trevor  Perkins:  a  Platonic  episode. 
The  turn  of  the  wheel. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWE1 

LOAN  DEPT. 

^^jittassaag?' 

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